Career
His first language was Langue d"oc and he learned French while working in Paris as a stonemason from the age of 14. He avoided being drafted into the army for seven years service due to injuries from a fall on a Paris building site and local connections with a sympathetic doctor. He escaped to England after the French Revolution of 1848 and became a schoolmaster under an assumed name in Wimbledon.
In England, he was initiated freemason.
A station of the Paris Métro was named after him but was absorbed by a renovated Gambetta station in 1969. His story is told in Gillian Tindall"s book The Journey of Martin Nadaud – A Life and Turbulent Times (Pimlico, 2000).
